Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2018 November 6

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November 6

Last precious-metal coin bearing the Queen's image issued for circulation

What was the last coin made wholly or partly with gold or silver that bore the image of Queen Elizabeth II? So far I've found that Canada maintained a silver coinage after 1968. Are there any other Commonwealth countries that maintained silver coinage even after that?—azuki (talk · contribs · email) 09:58, 6 November 2018 (UTC)

Australia stopped in March 1968. See https://www.ramint.gov.au/fifty-cents HiLo48 (talk) 10:06, 6 November 2018 (UTC)

I think, to clarify, 1968 was the last year for Canadian silver circulating coinage. The Montreal 1976 Olympic $5 and $10 were spent (most likely deposited in banks) when the price of silver was low, and likely the Calgary $20s leading up to 1988 too, but that is not real circulation, they would never be paid out by a bank to meet the needs of commerce.--Wehwalt (talk) 10:09, 6 November 2018 (UTC)

There is the sovereign, to whatever extent it still circulates in the Middle East.--Wehwalt (talk) 10:12, 6 November 2018 (UTC)

From this discussion, [1] I found that Gibraltar has a circulating silver coin [2] and yes they do have QEII. But they are currently selling [3] at £5 above the face value of £20 so I suspect they are another commemorative coin not intended to actually circulate. They aren't mentioned at Gibraltar pound. The highest there is I think the alpaca [4] ones. Like the Canadian example above, someone who buys them as bullion may I guess try to deposit them if the value of silver drops, but that would probably be about it. (While commemorative circulating precious metal coins are common, in most cases the bullion or purchase price is so much above the face value that no one is ever going to redeem them at face value.) Nil Einne (talk) 15:42, 6 November 2018 (UTC)

BTW that discussion and [5] this one does mention Gibraltar issuing silver and gold coins at face value. But particularly the later discussion and also [6] seems to confirm they didn't actually circulate in practice.

It seems the Canadian government did something similar recently [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] which had similar issues. Actually even banks sometimes would reject them, at least in part because they couldn't do anything with them but send them to the mint since no one would want them. I mean maybe a tiny number of people would convince shop keepers or whatever to take them, and a tiny number of these would convince some customer to take them, but it must have been minuscule even in the Canadian case. (Probably non existent in Gibraltar.)

By comparison, a commemorative 50 cent coin was issued in NZ in 2015 with 1 million coins being minted [12]. It was coloured and had a special front but just used ordinary metal and was designed in cooperation with manufacturers of coin handling machines that it would be recognised and accepted. I bought a bunch of these when they were issued and did actually normally manage to convince check out staff or shop keepers to accept them. And of course self service check out machines also accepted them without issue. The later, and I assume some of the former would have also given them out. (I expect they were especially used when buying poppies or donating for ANZAC day.) I doubt I was the only one to do this, so these probably really circulated, although not much. (I never received one but I hardly use cash normally.) You'd probably need something similar for one of these precious metal coins to actually circulate to any real extent.

Nil Einne (talk) 16:08, 6 November 2018 (UTC)

The UK is also issuing a twenty-pound silver coin at face value, and has done since 2013, see our rather poor article Twenty pounds (British coin). It may have been them who began the trend of issuing these silver coins at face value. Since the silver in it is worth less than the face value, the Mint gains through seignorage. Of course it would lose the twenty pounds if the coin was redeemed (though it would have the silver) but I bet that's a rare event. I wonder what would happen if someone presented one at the Royal Mint's gift shop in Wales? (full disclosure: when I visited there last year, I used a debit card).--Wehwalt (talk) 21:48, 6 November 2018 (UTC)

Sorry to disappoint, but unlike Australian and Canadian banks, UK banks do not accept non-circulating coinage, even though it is officially "legal tender". The Royal mint offers "money back (i.e. face value) for 6 months", but that's it. I don't have a source, so can someone else google this? Eliyohub (talk) 16:52, 8 November 2018 (UTC)

Gresham's law is relevant here. It effectively dictates that if silver coins were put into circulation, they would likely rapidly be hoarded and disappear. Eliyohub (talk) 16:52, 8 November 2018 (UTC)

Gresham's law is not a universal. The melt value of the zinc in U.S. pennies is greater than the face value, and no one is hoarding pennies to melt the zinc and recover it to make a profit. Pennies became worthless (physically) twelve years ago: [13], and yet the U.S. government still makes a metric shitton of them every year, and they aren't being hoarded for their metal content. There's a certain irrational nature to the value of metals, and exotic jewlery metals like silver and gold carry a significant value merely because people think they should be valuable, which is why people hoard silver coins, but not zinc coins (with a minuscule copper veneer). --Jayron32 02:49, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

That's what you think Jayron, but see If Laws Change, 'Penny Hoarders' Could Cash in on Thousands of Dollars. Alansplodge (talk) 21:01, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

Silver coins are hoarded and melted down because they can be sold easily. Most coin dealers have a set price for a dollar face value of such coins, and the trade is legal. US cents and nickels may not be melted or exported, per federal regulation (authority granted, I believe, by the Coinage Act of 1965). So no one will pay you the metal value, except of course for enthusiasts like those cited in the link Alansplodge mentioned. It is not against the law to hoard them. You're just not going to make a short term profit on them like you would melting down silver coins.--Wehwalt (talk) 21:48, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

Incidentally, coin shortages happen, on a local basis, all the time, because of public hoarding. Some places inflation has eroded coin value and local law enforcement is weak, so the coins get melted regardless of what government says. Or the public find a coin with a hole in a center makes an admirable washer, and for cheaper than the hardware dealer. Or the new coin will work as a slug in British vending machines. But getting back to the OP's questions, not considering sovereigns or non-circulating legal tender (and the odd error coin), the answer seems to be "1968".--Wehwalt (talk) 22:01, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

When the last commemorative coins were issued the Royal Mint instructed banks, post offices and shops not to accept them. They are no doubt redeemable at the Bank of England. 86.157.229.93 (talk) 17:57, 10 November 2018 (UTC)

The standard 1909-1981 US penny has never been more than $0.024 above face value and the standard postwar nickel never more than $0.047 above (daily prices, I didn't try to look for instantaneous) while by 1980 coins above nickel reached $3.58 1980 dollars per dime and it was legal. No wonder Greshams law happened. I suspect 4.7 cents per coin and $4.25 per pound would be enough to activate Greshams law in some or many countries, just not here with such strong anti-melting laws and in some states even free bottle deposits, easily harvestable. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 21:41, 10 November 2018 (UTC)

But the silver coins had already left circulation by 1980, meaning there was no disruption to the coin supply by the price spike (yes, there were some part-silver Kennedy half dollars around, but they sat in banks and so weren't needed for commerce).--Wehwalt (talk) 02:01, 11 November 2018 (UTC)

To get there it had to cross the level that caused supply problems (possibly below par if there was enough speculation, face value was a price floor and market value after all, which is better than most other investments). Silver coins only had to be sellable for a few % over face to exceed the ~$4.25 2011 dollars per pound fiat undervalue of the best day to melt nickels (if legal) and they exceeded that by over 2 orders of magnitude. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 04:43, 11 November 2018 (UTC)

Azeri breakaway region

Why did the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic change its name to Artsakh? It's easy to find references to the renaming, but they're mixed with other stuff (e.g. a US city renaming a street to "Artsakh Avenue"), and I'm not seeing explanations for the renaming. Nagorno-Karabakh constitutional referendum, 2017 quotes an Abkhaz politician saying that Nagorno-Karabakh politicians had expressed worry that the use of the name "Artsakh" and "Nagorno-Karabakh" by Azerbaijan for its athletic teams and artistic initiatives abroad might create the wrong impression of the region's reality. Was this a reason, and if so, was it the reason? Sports and art confusion with the enemy, without other reasons, would be surprisingly small reasons for a name change, and foreign politicians (not having a stake in the matter and not being scholars of the subject) aren't the best source for such a thing anyway. Nyttend (talk) 20:01, 6 November 2018 (UTC)

I don't know with 100% certainty, but "nagorno" is obviously a Russian-language word, while "Karabakh" or "Karabagh" is a geographical term associated with a traditionally ethnically-mixed region, and does not invoke any glorious Armenian history... AnonMoos (talk) 02:28, 7 November 2018 (UTC)

By the way, the Soviets sometimes loved creating little ethnic anomalies, such as transferring Crimea from Russia to Ukraine, or Stalin placing a predominantly Armenian region under Azerbaijani administration (though the even smaller area of Nakhichevan was discontinuously associated with Azerbaijan) -- remember that Stalin was nationalities commissar before he attained absolute power. Some of these little anomalies have been tremendously destabilizing in the post-Soviet period... AnonMoos (talk) 02:45, 7 November 2018 (UTC)

This is largely because of the opinion of the Soviets to Bourgeois nationalism. The Soviet Union had a rather bipolar attitude towards its ethnic minorities. For the 1920s and 1930s, the official policy was Korenizatsiya, which led to the establishment of dozens of ethnically homogeneous states within the USSR; the idea being that each culture would better take to Socialism if each culture was given its own homeland and socialism was adopted in the culture. There was a deliberate attempt to combat "Great Russian chauvanism" and enforce the idea that communism was really meant to be a world-wide movement. However, by the late 1930s, they basically flipped the switch and started running in the other direction, adopting a formal policy of Russification among the entire Soviet Union. The break up of formerly ethnically homogeneous political unions, and the deliberate moving of both borders and people (resettling Russians in amongst other ethnicities, and visa-versa) was part of this process. The process started under Stalin, but really got going under Khrushchev and later Brezhnev, who believed in crafting a new "Soviet" ethnic identity (read "Russian for everyone"). And thus, we have the mess we have today. When they committed these policies, the Soviet leadership didn't force the fall of the Soviet Union and the break up into independent nations; they were deliberately trying to build a cohesive national identity for their country. It was a long-range, multi-generation plan that had a very long play. Unfortunately, it barely lasted another generation... --Jayron32 21:28, 7 November 2018 (UTC)

• They are returning to their roots and beginning a new life at the same time.

Karabakh is a Turkic word. Artsakh, in turn, is Armenian and much older. Also, the name Nagorno-Karabakh suggests that it is only part of a greater Karabakh. Azerbaijani can use the word Karabakh, but they certainly will not use the word Artsakh, so no association with Azerbaijan ever. Шурбур (talk) 07:21, 7 November 2018 (UTC)